Vegan options now available at Carl’s Jr. and Einstein’s Bros. Bagels

Students can now find Carl’s Jr.’s new “Beyond Famous Star,” which contains a vegan alternative to a meat patty. The Beyond Famous Star’s patty consists mainly of peas, mung beans, rice protein and beets to give the patty a reddish color, just as a meat patty would look.

The texture of the Beyond Famous Star rivals actual beef.

Its similarities to a regular beef burger are suspicious, considering other veggie patties have a different texture, but rest assured. Carl’s Jr.’s burger came to be as a collaboration with the L.A. based company Beyond Meat, which provides vegan meat alternatives and recreates the fast-food experience for those who have alternative diets.

“The reason why I wanted to bring the Beyond Burger was to give more options to vegans since we don’t get a lot of vegan customers,” said Sabrina Hurtado, unit manager at Carl’s Jr. “It is one of our top sellers and many students are excited that we brought it in since there [aren’t] that many vegan burger options on campus.”

The Beyond Famous Star burger. (Natali Perez / The Poly Post)

The vegan bun is not at every Carl’s Jr. location, but it’s an option that Hurtado decided to bring into Carl’s Jr. on campus to ensure the burger is entirely vegan.

Einstein Bros. Bagels introduced a collaboration with Daiya, a company dedicated to providing dairy-free alternatives. It now offers a vegan shmear to top off a vegan bagel, for a complete animal-free breakfast.

The shmear comes in a plain flavor, and though there are slight differences in taste, it is comparable to an original cream cheese flavor. The consistency of the vegan shmear is identical to cream cheese as well.

“I recently started wanting to become vegan after being vegetarian for a while,” said Milan Castaneda, a second-year urban and regional planning major. “The bagel tasted pretty good and I thought the vegan shmear was a great alternative for regular cream cheese.”